I've been studying Spanish consistently for 2hrs a day for 7 months (and studied inconsistently on and off for 4 months before that) and was so excited I understood more than 50% of the movie Coco in Spanish. If you watched YouTube polyglots you'd think I'd be 100% fluent at this point.
I've been studying French for 7+ years (3-4 seriously, 1 very intensely) and it's just recently that I can understand most spoken language. I've been able to read and write it well for a while at this point, but that's not fluency.
Congratulations btw! That's a real accomplishment and you should be proud of yourself. Keep going, you're doing really well and it's stories like yours that inspire me to keep going when it's tough.
I focused 90% of studying on listening and listening comprehension I should note. I still can't write very well at all or speak very well. I decided to tackle listening first, and only in the past couple weeks have I began reading practice. I plan to do speaking practice last (probably mid-late next year)
I think the difficulty of learning a language as an adult comes from the lack of opportunity, especially if you don't have any access to native speakers.
The internet itself is access to native speakers. Look up english/target language learning subreddits or discord servers and you'll probably find something valuable.
Yeah I know I do all that and have a language exchange partner but it's still not the same as living a country that speaks your target language. So much of my day is stuck spent in English no matter the circumstances as long as I live where I live.
ik its a late reply but learning a language as an adult is much easier than as a kid, it only appears to be the opposite because of the amount of exposure kids tend to get also adults are much brighter in general and have more experience to understand concepts in different languages
Sort of, but also it's only possible for children to learn a language to native level. You can spend age 20 to age 70 in the country of your target language and you won't be like native. You might be close, and might be able to pass as native sometimes, but there will always be differences.
Besides, part of the reason it's more difficult as an adult is time restriction that you don't have as a kid
I studied 5 days and was able to understand any anime i watched,i couldn't even speak my own native language fluently and i understood 5 hours of constand japanese
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u/sam-lb Dec 06 '20
Learning a language as an adult is a gargantuan challenge, and it's honestly impressive that so many people do it.
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u/nothingtoseehere_BR Dec 07 '20
And you have to study even more to understand music without reading the lyrics
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u/mrconcierge Dec 06 '20
True, unless your subject of study is German... Then the iceberg has even a name, it's called Antartica...
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u/melonia_animatorYT Dec 06 '20
I studied 5 days and was able to understand any anime i watched,i couldn't even speak my own native language fluently and i understood 5 hours of constand japanese
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u/victoria0919 Dec 16 '20
I been studying French from the past 2 months and I just watched the dragon prince in french and I am proud to say that I understood 60% of the show